This chapter is from the book

If you’re reading this chapter, I am going to assume that you are serious about following the cult of “The Practical Software Architect” and you would like to not only proudly wear the badge but also practice the discipline in your real-world software and systems development gigs and be wildly successful at it.

Software architects come in various flavors, and often they are interesting characters. Some architects work at a very high level engaging in drawing pictures on the back of a napkin or drawing a set of boxes and lines on a whiteboard, where no two boxes ever look the same. Others tend to get into fine-grained details too soon and often fail to see the forest for the trees; that is, see the bigger overarching architectural landscape. Still others are confused about what is the right mix. There is a need to level the playing field so that there is not only a common and comprehensible understanding of the discipline of software architecture, but also of what is expected of the role of the software architect, in order to be successful every time.

This chapter provides some background on the discipline of software architecture and some of the time-tested value drivers that justify its adoption. I end the chapter by laying some groundwork for the essential elements of the discipline that you and I, as flag bearers of the practical software architect cult, must formalize, practice, and preach.

How about a The PSA (pronounced “thepsa”) T-shirt?

Some Background

Software architecture, as a discipline, has been around for more than four decades, with its earliest works dating back to the 1970s. However, it is only under the pressures of increasing complexity hovering around the development of complex, mission-critical, and real-time systems that it has emerged as one of the fundamental constructs of mainstream systems engineering and software development.

Like any other enduring discipline, software architecture also had its initial challenges. However, this is not to say that it is free of all the challenges yet! Early efforts in representing the architectural constructs of a system were laden with confusing, inconsistent, imprecise, disorganized mechanisms that were used to diagrammatically and textually represent the structural and behavioral aspects of the system. What was needed was a consistent and well-understood pseudo- or metalanguage that could be used to unify all modes of representation and documentation of software architecture constructs and artifacts. The engineering and computer science communities, fostered by academic research, have made tremendous strides in developing best practices and guidelines around formalization of architecture constructs to foster effective communication of outcomes with the necessary stakeholders.